Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and raised in the Bronx, N.Y., Jason Sommer is the son of a Holocaust survivor and has written about the Holocaust in his most recent book, “The Man Who Sleeps in My Office” (University of Chicago Press). His previous books are “Other People’s Troubles” (1997) from the same press, and “Lifting the Stone” (Forest Books, 1991). Sommer has been honored with a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Fellowship. He teaches at Fontbonne University in St. Louis.

“What Men Want” — the title is a gender flip on a famous question of Freud’s — has an easy conversational style. The speaker tells a dinner party anecdote, and in recording the byplay of interpretations and interruptions, the poet demonstrates the difficulty of delivering a feeling past the battle lines of gender. Behind it all, and very appropriate for this time in the Jewish calendar, is the possibility of renewal, which is also difficult, yet something for which we all wish.

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